Hello fellow sp users,I was wondering how do you balance beatmaking and your "real" life ? I'm asking this because I'm at the end of my studies, and I'm worried that the jobs that I might get won't let me any time for music, so I'm considering a reorientation in a field related to it. Are some of you living off music ? Did you manage a way to earn money and still be on the sp most of the day ?(selling baggies doesn't count ) Was the choice of your job influenced by music/ beatmaking ?

I'm a commercial insurance account manager. Even tho I work 40 hours a week, I still spend about 30 hours a week in my studio......it WAS like 60 hours a week the first few years I made beats. Since I work on a computer & can pretty much do what I want, I read manuals, play on forums, basically do all the research during work hours.

If this is something that is most important to you, you can easily find time to make music & work a full time job (I get it's different when you have kids tho).

Recently I decided I want to "semi" retire in the next few years. I make decent money but live in an old mobile home & drive a shitty car so I can put my money into my passions as well as save money for my "semi" retirement. I realized a long time ago I care more about happiness & "living life" than owning a nice house & driving a nice car (when I was young I cared A LOT about nice things, but life changed that for me). Once my debt is paid off, I'll only need like $900 a month TOTAL to live. Once I have a nice chunk of money saved, I'm quitting. I might get a part time job at a record store or something, I also have a few other ideas like maybe fixing & selling gear, selling art work, ect, ect. If I only need $900 a month to live it will be a lot easier for me to try to make money & live off my passions. Plus if I save a bunch of money I'll have that to help out.

I mix production sound on TV commercials around Los Angeles, sometimes by myself and sometimes as a boom operator with someone else mixing... Not really being creative but I am around audio gear a lot..

I'm a commercial insurance account manager. Even tho I work 40 hours a week, I still spend about 30 hours a week in my studio......it WAS like 60 hours a week the first few years I made beats. Since I work on a computer & can pretty much do what I want, I read manuals, play on forums, basically do all the research during work hours.

If this is something that is most important to you, you can easily find time to make music & work a full time job (I get it's different when you have kids tho).

Thanks, that's pretty comforting. Actually having a job where you can listen to music/dig for samples would be really cool, had something like that this summer

kel wrote:

I mix production sound on TV commercials around Los Angeles, sometimes by myself and sometimes as a boom operator with someone else mixing... Not really being creative but I am around audio gear a lot..

Did you have any education/training for that ? Or is it just with self learning ?

DJ Pogo Angel wrote:

i brew beer

that's fucking cool, the day when I can make legal money growing trees... Well I won't have to work anymore

The moral of my story is, if you can, don't let fear guide your decisions.

The only reason I can kind of do what I want at work is I've been doing it 18 years & worked up to this point. When I was younger I was scared to follow my dreams & scared to take chances, so I took the easiest/safest route with respects to a career choice. & in my spare time I just wanted to party. I'll admit it.

@SharrisTotally agree w what ur saying & have mad respect for the plan ur working on and thought you’ve put behind it.

Building on what Sharris said, pick something u really like and just go for it. Don’t proceed timidly... pick something u like enough to want to talk to people about it all the time (outside of work), because that’s where u will make connections that propel u forward faster than climbing a corporate ladder. It’s hard to imagine getting paid to make underground beats well enough to survive, so I’d suggest something that could run parallel to making music... something in the music industry, or promotion/marketing would make sense... or graphic design. Something with a good amount of overlap. Then u can try to find opportunities to work ur beatmaking into the other stuff... ie, editing a vid for a client where u could make a beat as well, making music for a website u r working on... go pro in social media and make beats for social media clients.

@SharrisTotally agree w what ur saying & have mad respect for the plan ur working on and thought you’ve put behind it.

Building on what Sharris said, pick something u really like and just go for it. Don’t proceed timidly... pick something u like enough to want to talk to people about it all the time (outside of work), because that’s where u will make connections that propel u forward faster than climbing a corporate ladder. It’s hard to imagine getting paid to make underground beats well enough to survive, so I’d suggest something that could run parallel to making music... something in the music industry, or promotion/marketing would make sense... or graphic design. Something with a good amount of overlap. Then u can try to find opportunities to work ur beatmaking into the other stuff... ie, editing a vid for a client where u could make a beat as well, making music for a website u r working on... go pro in social media and make beats for social media clients.

Yeah I totally agree, thing is I will have a master degree in political sciences soon, which is great, but it seems like most of the job I can have with it are the kind where you work 12 hours and still have a shitload of stuff to do. Well I'll see how it goes, I'm still young. And I don't consider living off music but it'd be nice to be in a field close to it, just to meet some people IRL interested by it.

this is a loose term used to describe the martial arts that were developed by the slaves brought to the Americas from the Congo, Nigeria, Angola, Ghana and Senegal roughly.

These people who were brought here as slave were generally the losers of tribal wars and therefor were well versed in warfare and personal combat. ADMA are arts that are a western regional synthesis of the martial arts in those countries of west Africa.

my parents bought an out of business restaurant back in '97 or '98 with all the savings they scrounged up from working in fast food for two decades. my mother, the incredible cook she is, wrote every recipe herself (even though it is an italian restaurant, and she is persian haha she could cook any food better than anyone god it was ridiculous and i miss it so much) and i'm not just biased, we were awarded best pizza in dallas by the dallas observer TWO different years. anyways, i've been working there for 6 years as a driver and as a server, currently as a server. when my mother passed away she left me 16.6% of the business, so it's my career now! my sister and i are running it. when my dad passes away (he's 63), it's going to be just me and her running it! soooo that's my job. i'm currently a server, and i'm a restaurant owner.

Deputy sales manager at a gas station, It´s a nice job and the pay is good.It started in my mid 20s as a summer job, but the people and costumers were so nice i stayed around.Now 10 years later i work 40h a week, but i´m on the lookout for a new job

But since i got a kid last year i have about 300 payed "parental days" to use.Those days i tend to wake up early, drink coffe and make music.When the kid wakes up he joins me in the studio.Hes got his own mini upright piano and my midi keyboard is alwayson with some cool synyh so he can play when he wants to.

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